Civil society,social movements and Democracy in Southern Africa

The article reviews the theory of civil society and social movements in a general perspective and relates the theoretical argument to recent economic and political changes in Southern African states. Salient aspects of civil society and its role in the democratic process is considered and the role of different key institutions and organizations in the democratic process are analyzed. The role of economic elites is equivocal, both because of the racial dimension in their composition and in the way they avoid addressing problems of living standards of the working class. The most important institutions of civil society seem to be the universities and the church, whereas the role of media is less important than one might have expected, because of widespread state control and state ownership. The article analyzes the particular role of different social movements and offers an interesting comparison of their strengths and weaknesses in democratization processes in various Southern African countries.     

Community mobilization, organizing, and media advocacy. A discussion of methodological issues

Community Mobilization refers to those activities that prepare communities to accept, receive, and support prevention interventions designed to reduce alcohol-involved trauma. Media advocacy refers to the strategic use of media by those seeking to advance a social or public policy initiative. Within the Community Prevention Trial, both of these activities were critical elements. This article presents the evaluation design for community mobilization and media advocacy implemented for the project. Here the authors argue for the need to include both structured and unstructured community monitoring instruments, coding of local alcohol-related news coverage, and surveying community members about the exposure to alcohol-related problems, and support for project interventions. This article also presents an audience segmentation analysis and discusses the implications of this analysis for media advocacy efforts.     

The civility of social capital: Public relations in the public sphere,civil society,and democracy

Scholars have analyzed public relations’ role in democracy via proxy concepts like the public sphere and civil society. However, some have critiqued the public sphere on grounds of equal access and portrayed civil society as a guise for first-world imperialism. These critiques have implications for the role of public relations in the public sphere and civil society. This article suggests the normative role of public relations in democracy is best perceived as creating the social capital that facilitates access to spheres of public discussion and in maintaining relationships among those organizations that check state power. To that end, the paper argues that social capital does much to advance public relations theory and prescribe the role of public relations in democracy. Several implications for public relations from a social capital perspective are offered, including the creation of generalized societal trust, the building of cross-cutting or “weak” ties, the engagement of media on behalf of subaltern counterpublics, and the (re)creation of community or a fully functioning society.     

Women and mass media: a critical and analytical study of the portrayal of Sudanese women in printed media

This study examines how Sudanese women are portrayed in the mass media. Data are obtained from a content analysis of historical records of Sudanese daily newspapers and women's magazines and from surveys among female editors in print media. The following types of newspapers are reviewed: independent newspapers; papers for the Al-Umma Party, a communist party, a Bathist party, a Muslim Nationalist Islamic Front Party, and a National Union Democratic Party; and a current military government paper. Women's magazines are published by women. Articles focus on women as the main newsmakers, women's life issues, female authors, a female focus but a male author, and famous Sudanese women. 16 content themes are identified. Women were not extensively featured or photographed in either newspapers or magazines. The Al-Umma Party paper and Al-Sudan Al-Hadith paper (an independent paper) were the only two newspapers with at least 10 photos of women. Women were pictured as professionals, educated persons, and leaders. There were 17 female editors. These editors preferred an image of women as leaders, followed by productive workers. Only 11.76% believed that women's dual roles as producers and reproducers should be portrayed. Female editors did not want a special women's page. 52.94% (the largest percentage) preferred targeting women with substantial leadership abilities. 17.65% desired the portrayal of women as workers and housewives. 58.82% did not think that the mass media image changed behavior or attitudes, because most Sudanese women are illiterate. Women's issues in both newspapers and women's magazines were devoted to women's work, achievements, and needs. The authors recommend removal of obstacles to women's equal participation in the mass media and press and research on the effect of media images on women's self-perception and behavior.     

Governing drug reimbursement policy in Poland: The role of the state,civil society,and the private sector

This article investigates the distribution of power in Poland’s drug reimbursement policy in the early 2000s. We examine competing theoretical expectations suggested by neopluralism, historical institutionalism, corporate domination, and clique theory of the post-communist state, using data from a purposive sample of 109 semi-structured interviews and documentary sources. We have four concrete findings. First, we uncovered rapid growth in budgetary spending on expensive drugs for narrow groups of patients. Second, to achieve these favorable policy outcomes drug companies employed two prevalent methods of lobbying: informal persuasion of key members of local cliques and endorsements expressed by patient organizations acting as seemingly independent “third parties.” Third, medical experts were co-opted by multinational drug companies because they relied on these firms for scientific and financial resources that were crucial for their professional success. Finally, there was one-way social mobility from the state to the pharmaceutical sector, not the “revolving door” pattern familiar from advanced capitalist countries, with deleterious consequences for state capacity. Overall, the data best supported a combination of corporate domination and clique theory: drug reimbursement in Poland was dominated by Western multinationals in collaboration with domestically based cliques.     

Democracy as a transitional compass: women’s participation in South Africa and Kerala,India

ABSTRACT

In this article I explore the attempts by the states in South Africa and Kerala to create spaces for public participation by specifically focusing on women’s involvement in local spaces. Democracy is a crucial part of any emancipatory future that seeks to challenge and overcome inequality. I show that both states have ‘invited’ participation by women in various ways, but that the transformative potential of this participation is limited by national political economy, bureaucratization, and the lack of political will. In South Africa, the invited spaces eventually transformed into avenues for delivery and in response the women in this study shifted to inventing ways to engage in development in their personal lives. By using a double comparison – South Africa over time and South Africa compared to India – I argue that transformative politics requires a combination of invented and invited spaces.     

The transformative power of civil society in South Africa: an activist’s perspective on innovative forms of organizing and rights-based practices

ABSTRACT

This essay analyses recent campaigns to fulfil human rights to quality basic education and access to mental health care services, led by SECTION27, a social justice organization in South Africa. It investigates how these campaigns were able to impact on inequality in education and health care and the ways in which they mobilized and empowered communities to demand social justice and drive pro-poor transformation. In particular, it looks at the way SECTION27 used human rights law and the Courts to advance social justice. It records many positive outcomes. But concludes by asking whether, if inequality is enabled by elite power can it only be disabled by people’s power? How can civil society overcome fault-lines in its sustainability, representativity and power structure? It argues that civil society must do more to tackle the systems and not just scratch at the symptoms of a more and more unequal world.     

The Dark Side of Democracy: Migration, Xenophobia and Human Rights in South Africa

South Africa prides itself on having one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. The Bill of Rights guarantees a host of basic political, cultural and socio-economic rights to all who are resident in the country. Yet there have been persistent reports that citizen intolerance of non-citizens, refugees and migrants has escalated dramatically since 1994.
This article documents this process through presentation of results of national public opinion surveyed by the Southern African Migration Project (SAMP).
The surveys show that intolerance is extremely pervasive and growing in intensity and seriousness. Abuse of migrants and refugees has intensified and there is little support for the idea of migrant rights. Only one group of South Africans, a small minority with regular personal contact with non-citizens, is significantly more tolerant.
These findings do not augur well for migrant and refugee rights in this newly democratic country, or early acceptance of the UN Convention on the protection of migrant workers.     

Social enterprise as a bottom-up dynamic: part 1. The reaction of civil society to unmet social needs in Italy,Sweden and Japan

Over the past decades, social enterprises have been acknowledged as key welfare actors in several EU countries. In spite of the dramatic research devoted to exploring them, several issues concerning the definition, drivers and roles played by policies in sustaining social enterprise growth are still highly contested. Drawing on the papers published in this Monographic section, the introduction to this issue reconstructs the debate that has accompanied the emergence and development of social enterprises with a view to providing evidence of the advantages of collective participation for social enterprise emergence and growth. Next, the introduction pays attention to the factors that have led to the emergence and success of social enterprises as a form of self-organization of civil society; and briefly describes the papers included in this issue.     

The future of cooperatives and trade unions: the relevance for the question of democratization of society

ABSTRACT

Co-operatives and trade unions are the oldest organizations of democratic participation, founded nearly 200 years ago. For sure the main challenges for the world and especially for the trade unions and the social economy today are the environmental degradation in all realms and globalization dominated by the financial capital. To better understand these issues a historical approach is needed.     

Separate education and hegemonic domination: civil society challenges in the Arab-Jewish city of Jaffa

The case of education in the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Jaffa, Israel, demonstrates the dialectical role of education in conflict-affected societies. As scholars of transformative education and critical pedagogy have noted, education tends to serve as an instrument of the dominant ideology of social and political elites, yet it is also a significant arena of civil society, where diverse and often subversive identities and values can be asserted. This duality is particularly evident in conflict-affected societies, where, as Gallagher points out, education can either contribute to conflict or challenge it, through structure of schools, contents of the curriculum and the routes and opportunities available to young people. The education system in Jaffa demonstrates the ways in which schooling separation, lack of multiculturalism in the curriculum and discrimination in education enforce elite domination. At the same time, it demonstrates how community members and civil society organisations may use the education system as an arena for challenging the status quo of inter-community relations in conflict-affected societies, through initiatives that may occur due to necessity, response to negative change or ideological challenges to domination.     

Liberal dreams: Materialism and evolutionary civil society in the projection of nation in Southeast Asia

This article focuses on the introduction of ethnicity into Southeast Asia, as a component of the nineteenth century British projection of empire. The argument is that rather than projecting a cosmopolitan vision of community, British liberalism naturalised ethnicity through the concept of civil society. This presented a global vision of societies being independent and emerging from the local landscape. These liberal notions of civil society represent an early incarnation of self-determination. The British Empire in Southeast Asia emerged within this intellectual climate, and its early construction reflected this vision. In essence, the British Empire in Southeast Asia was founded on the nebulous idea of providing self-determination to Southeast Asian nations. This notion of self-determination was a qualified concept of independence, framed around opening these civil societies to British trading hegemony.     

Cultural structures,social action,and the discourses of American civil society: A reply to Battani,Hall, and Powers

Theory and Society -     

利益契合:转型期中国国家与社会关系的一个分析框架——以行业组织政策参与为案例

通过对转型期中国国家与社会关系研究文献的批判性梳理,本文基于理性选择视角提出一个以利益契合为核心概念的分析框架,并以行业组织政策参与的比较案例予以验证。本文认为,国家与社会的利益契合程度决定了国家对社会组织选择支持还是限制,这与转型期国家的主导地位和较高的自由裁量权有关。新分析框架更强调国家在处理与社会组织关系中的策略性选择和低制度化程度,较之源自于西方的理论概念(如公民社会理论、法团主义理论和治理理论)能更深入地揭示国家与社会组织互动关系的实质,同时也是对本土理论(如分类控制理论)的拓展与修正。